Phrasal template

A phrasal template is a phrase-long collocation that contains one or several empty slots which may be filled by words to produce individual phrases. Often there are some restrictions on the grammatic category of the words allowed to fill particular slots. An example is the phrase "common stocks rose <Number> to <Number>", e.g., "common stocks rose 1.72 to 340.36".[1]

Phrasal templates are akin to forms in which blanks are to be filled with data.

A neologism, "snowclone", was introduced to refer to a special case of phrasal templates that "clone" popular clichés. For example, "pink is the new red", Quiet Is the New Loud and the multitudes were spawned by "pink is the new black", according to the template "Y is the new X", which in its turn was a misquote of Diana Vreeland's "Pink is the navy blue of India".[5]